


Hope

by orphan_account



Category: Inside Out (2015)
Genre: Anxiety, Attempted Kidnapping, Concussions, Depression, Kidnapping, Missing Persons, basically an autobiographical au or something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6130837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot idea that wouldn't leave me alone.</p>
<p>After a concussion leaves headquarters a wreck, the Emotions call in some backup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

“So, when’s the last time you saw ‘er, anyway?”

“I don’t know, uh, things have been so…messy, uh, a long time ago… We were sleeping, I think? It was after The Accident…”  
Sadness turned away from Officer Cymbalta to stare at the cracked floor. She had vivid flashbacks to that fateful day, and it made her extremely… well, sad. The emotion sighed and looked up at the Officer. She winced. He was so intimidating…!

“I see. What exactly was this… Accident everyone keeps talking about?”

“Oh it was just terrible. See, Rose had just started this new sport thing? I was against it from the start because Rose isn’t really good at sports. But-but Joy thought it was a good idea to try it. Plus our dad really liked the sport, so Joy thought it would strengthen Family Island even more. So-so we were just practicing, and-and, oh boy… We weren’t paying attention and-and!” Sadness felt tears start to form in her eyes, an acquainted feeling. In a way, crying seemed to be the only thing that made sense to her. It was familiar. It was safe. It was a constant in a world of instability. She completely lost track of what she was saying and started to bawl her little eyes out.

“Sadness! Ugh, are you kidding me!?” 

Disgust pointed a freshly manicured finger to the screen. Oh no, oh Sadness had accidentally leaned up against the control panel. Now, Rose was crying in the car ride home from school. And for no real reason… And her mother was questioning her about this sudden outburst. Oh no… There really wasn’t a reason…

“I’ll take care of this!” Anger shoved an officer aside and pounded a fist onto the panel. “This is ridiculous! Doesn’t she know what we’re going through!?”

Rose took a breath and snapped. “NOTHING! GOD, YOU’RE THE WORST!”

Disgust rolled her eyes when Mom snapped back. “Anger! That’s not helping… Ugh, we just gotta…”

Rose rolled her eyes and groaned.

“Oh no,” Sadness pointed, “Now Mom’s even more mad at us… Maybe this wasn’t the best idea-“

Fear leapt onto the desk, “WASN’T THE BEST IDEA?” She screamed, while her hands flew around the board at lightning fast speeds, “SHE’S NEVER GONNA FORGIVE US NOW! SHE’LL TELL DAD, AND HE’LL KICK US OUT, AND WE’LL NEVER HAVE A FUTURE AND-“

Another officer came over. “Hey, hey, just take it easy everyone, alright? We’re going nuts over here. Everyone just take a breather. I’ll man the station while everyone takes a break.”

Sadness lowered her head and let her glittery blue hair fall in front of her eyes. She missed Joy so much. She wished she hadn’t been moping about the sport during practice. Then maybe Rose wouldn’t have gotten hit. Then maybe Joy wouldn’t be missing… 

“Don’t worry, kid, we’ll find her. No matter what it takes.” An officer patted her shoulder, and then walked away to meet up with the rest of the pack.   
Sadness was by herself, not that she minded of course. The other three emotions resumed talking to the Officers, so Sadness flopped onto the floor and sighed. She remembered The Accident like it was yesterday, although quite a few months had passed. The Officer requiring her to bring it up before only made her feel worse.

It was the middle of practice, just like any other day. Sadness was talking about how much this sport upset Rose. She summoned a memory of writing, and how happy it made her. Joy nodded in agreement. Maybe this sport thing was a mistake, after all…

Then, the Accident happened. Due to the summoned memory, Rose wasn’t paying attention to the practice, and a stray lacrosse ball smacked her right on her left cheek bone.   
Everything fell like dominoes. The memory gears cracked and broke off, their ability to create new memories seriously impaired. The day’s memories tumbled from the shelves and exploded on the floor. Ideas were smashed, a surplus of daydreams fell from their boxes, and the Recall tubes were completely destroyed. It was as if a tantrum passed through. destroying everything in its path with absolutely no mercy. And then, everything past Headquarters fell into a complete and utter chaos. 

When the dust settled, they found Joy under a fallen memory shelf. She was seriously hurt, and couldn’t even stand up without being in immense pain. With Joy hurt so badly, Sadness became the lead emotion. Nobody was happy with this. But what could the emotions do? No matter how hard she tried, Joy just wasn’t well enough to lead. And Sadness vowed to do her best as leader until Joy was fully healed.

The doctors call The Accident a “concussion”. They made Rose do exercises that helped the Neurons rebuild the Recall Tubes the memory makers. It was working, slowly but surely things were started to repair themselves.

Just when things started to get cleaned up, Joy disappeared. 

She has called dream duty, claiming all the emotions had been working too hard and deserved a break. She said she could handle it... 

And the next morning she was gone. The only clue they had was a smudge of Gloom where she was sitting for the night. It didn’t take a neuron to figure out what had happened. Joy was weak and powerless against a force like Gloom.

“Well, looks like we got a classic case of Depression here, boys.”

Sadness looked up through her glasses. All the officers had gathered near the broken window towards the back of Headquarters. “The lead we have is this.” He held up a test tube of a greasy, oily black substance. “A trace of Gloom. Easy open book case, people. Find any other traces of Gloom, find Joy, bring 'er back, and then fix 'er up. You all know the drill! NOW LET’S MOVE OUT!”

Suddenly, each of the officers unfolded a glorious set of wings, one blue and one a deep green. Sadness’ eyes grew wide. The head officer saluted to the Emotions before hurdling himself out the window, and one at a time they were gone, soaring over the Memory Dump in a precise V formation.

“Do you think that’s exactly safe?” Fear asked.  
“Of course it is!” Anger grumbled, “Even if it’s a little flashy.”  
“I just wish their wings were the same color. That gross green color is the color of barf.” Disgust mumbled.

Sadness turned around to face the monitor. With a small sigh she quickly brushed the daydreams of Joy away. There were distracting Rose. 

At least in her studies, Sadness thought, she could focus on something other than the missing emotion.

“Chemistry?” Disgust scoffed, “That’s the WORST. Why are we doing this again?”  
“Because, genius, the homework’s due uh, tomorrow!” Anger nudged Disgust out of the way.  
“And-and if we don’t have it done, the teacher will call on us! And then the other students will stare at us! Oh man, we do not want that!!!” Fear was punching the ‘panic’ button excessively.

“Guys guys!” Sadness pushed them away, “Come on, let’s just… Let’s just focus.”

And so, days came and went. More and more of the officers came with each passing day. Sadness watched them unfold their wings and fly away, and hope that every day they would return with Joy in tow. And every night when they returned empty handed, Sadness wouldn’t let the overwhelming disappointment make her lose hope. They’ve come this far, and she wasn’t going to let everyone give up just yet.

She kept Rose on the girl's school work as best as she could.

There was no way she was giving up. There was no way she was going to let anyone give up.

She will return. Rose will not feel this way forever. They just had to keep holding on.

For Joy.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was just a thing I came up with to describe what my experience with depression might look like in the "Inside Out" universe! Cymbalta is a medication used to treat depression (as well as a lot of other things) so I thought it might be funny to have them as like a police officer-type thing.
> 
> Everything that happened in the story happened to me!


End file.
